GRAPES AND THORNS.

GRAPES AND THORNS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”CHAPTER IV.AN INCH OF FRINGE.Mr. Schöningerhad been in such haste to keep his engagement the evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to conceal her disappointment.He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even kind when he answered her.“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing to-night.”She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come nearer, but hesitated to do so.At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their walks.These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, andso pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs. Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil, and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin. His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he could not renew.“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try. All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair start. You know I never had a chance.”His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right. Don’t be unhappy about thepast, nor blame yourself in anything. All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital, and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard this afternoon.”“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it, and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their time.”She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly, glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs. Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her example.Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out, and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze, and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a little ball on the water-column of a fountain.Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too, yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden, and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon. The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed with stars.Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion outside and the waving boughs andvines had a quieting effect; yet she was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt. Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence. To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without thanks.An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life, when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life then, and would gladly hide in death.Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree, then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger, coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden for it.Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts. She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears. Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up her cross, this time with an upward glance.When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God, could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”Yet that the happiness of givinglove and help is nobler and more elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline, till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift. Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars. Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a whisper. It was a thunder-storm playedpiano. Annette was lulled to a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream, growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like a shriek that syllabled her name.She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the voice of lamentation leaves the othershors de combat.In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on a chair near by.“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I do?” she cried.Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat were too dry for speech.“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence, thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer powerless.“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man. “Tell me all you know about it.”Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down immediately.Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis and Jack will take care of you.”Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if her daughter had not held her.“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the breathless messenger.“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your horses?”He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then hurried on up the hill.The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went into the house.Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness; and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald, weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An argument was, however, found to silence her.“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have you told any one?”“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for the sake of punishingthat man.“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a peculiar light-brown shade.Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenchedin her stiffening fingers when they took her up.The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over the wheel into the carriage.“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand, nor what I saw,” she whispered.He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided thereafter.“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all, and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties, and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It didnot seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service. She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used, and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some littlesouvenirsto those who would value them for her sake. And now let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone out of the house.”“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is he quiet? Does he eat anything?”“He eats about as much as would keep a fly,” the housekeeper sighed. “But he sits at the table, and tries the best he can. If you’d seen him the first night after it was all over! I came up and poured the tea out for him, and, indeed, my eyes were so full I came near scalding myself with it. He took something on his plate, and made believe taste of it, and talked in a cheerful sort of way about the weather and about something he wanted to have done. But when he saw my hand holding the cup out to him, he stopped short in what he was saying, and choked up, and then he leaned back in his chair and burst out a-crying. It was the same little cup and spoon she always gave him, but it wasn’t the same woman that held it across the table for him to take. And I set the cup down and cried too: what else? And, ‘Jane,’ says he, ‘where’s the little hand that for years has been stretched out to me every evening?’ What could the like of me say, ma’am, to comfort a priest in his sorrow? I couldn’t help speaking, though, and says I, ‘May be there isn’t the length of the table between you,’ says I, ‘and the little hand is holding out the first bitter cup it ever offered you to drink. But, oh! drink it, father dear,’ says I, ‘and may be you’ll find a blessing at the bottom.’ And then I was so ashamed of myself for preaching to the priest that I ran out of the room. After a little while his bell rang, and I wiped my eyes, and went in. And there he sat with a trembling kind of a smile on his face, and says he, ‘Jane, how am I to get my tea at all?’ So I gave him the cup, and went and stood by the fireplace. And he talked about things in the house, and asked me if I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. The Lord knows I didn’t, ma’am, through my mother not being overneat, besides taking a drop now and then. But it’s decenter, and so I said yes. And when I was cheered up a little, he sent me out. But when I was going through the door, he spoke to me, and says he, ‘Jane!’ And when I looked back, and said ‘Sir!’ says he, ‘Jane, you’re right. There is a blessing at the bottom of it.’ And he smiled in a way that was sadder than tears. Since that he has the tray set at his elbow, and pours the tea for himself. And now, ma’am,I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t let anybody know, for may be I oughtn’t to speak of it. That first night following the funeral I heard him walking about his room after I went to bed, and I knew he couldn’t sleep; though, indeed, it was little that any of us slept that night. Well, by-and-by, when I’d been drowsy like, I heard him go out into the entry, and I thought that perhaps some one had rung the bell. I was frightened for fear of who it might be; so I got up, and threw something on, and crept up the stairs, and peeped through the rail, all ready to scream for help. I watched him open the door, with the street-lamp shining not far off; and, O Mrs. Gerald! if he didn’t kneel down there and kiss the threshold where she stood that night watching him drive away; and he cried that pitiful that it was all I could do not to cry out loud myself, and let him know I was there.”The first sharpness of the impression made by this event wore away, and people began to talk of other things. Some wealthy Protestants of Crichton made up for F. Chevreuse the money he had lost, and thus soothed their regret for the loss which they could not repair to him. Even those who were most grieved felt their lives closing over the wound. Duties and plans that had been interrupted were resumed, among them that for a concert in aid of the new convent. Miss Ferrier’s rehearsal had been a last preparation for this concert, which had been postponed on account of the death of Mother Chevreuse, and it was necessary to have another.Annette threw herself into these preparations with spirit. Her affairs were prospering as well as she could expect. F. Chevreuse had talked with Mrs. Ferrier, and brought her to reason, and Lawrence had been induced to yield a little. It was settled that the marriage should take place on the first of September, and the young couple spend one year with the mother. After that they were to be free to go where they liked, Annette with an ample allowance assured her, and a promise that the property should be equally divided in case of her mother’s death.“The young man is behaving very well,” F. Chevreuse said, “and he ought to be trusted and encouraged. He goes regularly to Mass, and attends closely to his business. I shall not soon forget how much he did for me when—when I was away that night. The shock seems to have awakened him. He sees what indolence and unfixed principles may lead to, and that a man who rocks like a boat on the tide of his own passions may drift anywhere. We must be good to him.”“If you would only give him a plain talking to, father,” Mrs. Ferrier said. She had an immense faith in the power of talk. “If you would tell him what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. Just warn him.”The priest shook his head.“I believe in sometimes leaving God to warn in his own way,” he said. “It is a mistake for even the wisest man to be perpetually thrusting his clumsy fingers into the delicate workings of the human soul. We are priests, but we are not Gods; and men and women are not fools. They should be left to themselves sometimes. God has occasional messages for his children which do not need our intervention. Too much direction is degrading to an intelligent soul.”F. Chevreuse had been involuntarily expressing the thought that startedup in his own mind rather than addressing his companion; and, seeing at a glance that she had not understood a word of what he had been saying, he smilingly adapted his talk to her comprehension.“I heard a story once,” he said, “of a careful mother who was going away from home to spend the day. Before starting, she called her children about her, and, after telling them of certain things which they were not to do, she concluded in this wise: ‘And don’t you go up into the back attic, to the dark corner behind the big chimney, and take up a loose board in the floor, and pull out a bag of dry beans there is there, and get beans in your noses.’ Then she went away, having forbidden every evil which she could imagine might happen to them. When she came home at night, every child had a bean up its nose. Don’t you see she had better not have said anything about those beans? The children didn’t know where they were. No; if you want to keep any one from evil, talk to him of what is good. The more you look at evil, even to abuse it, the less shocking it is to you. The more you talk about it, the more people will do it. Sometimes it must be spoken of; but beware of saying too much. Do you know when darkness appears darkest? When you have been looking at light. Therefore, my lady, say all that is pleasant to this young man, and try to forget that there ever was anything unpleasant.”Mrs. Ferrier was not one to oppose the earnestly expressed wish of a clergyman, and, at this time, all F. Chevreuse’s people felt an unusual desire to show him their love and obedience. Besides, she was rather proud of having been considered so implacable that no one but a priest could influence her, and of being able to say, in defence of her change of plan: “I did it for the sake of F. Chevreuse.” She even boasted a little of this intercession, and took care it should be known that the church had begged her to be lenient, and had for a moment anxiously awaited her decision.“Besides,” she would add, “he takes a good deal more pains to be pleasant now.”Lawrence, indeed, took no such pains, and, perhaps, liked Annette’s mother less than ever. The only change was in herself. She had, by being civil to him, rendered it possible for him to be agreeable. When he was spoken of slightingly, she had insulted him; when he was praised to her, she conciliated. It was not necessary that there should be any change in him.Annette, too, had taken his cause up with a high hand. The passion of love, which had sometimes made her timid in speaking of him, was unconsciously giving place to a passion of pity, which made her fearless. Woe to the servant who was dilatory in waiting on Mr. Gerald, or lacking in any sign of respect for him. He was consulted about everything. Not a curtain, nor chair, nor spoon could be bought till he had approved. A cool “I will see what Lawrence thinks of it,” was enough to postpone a decision on any subject. “He has taste, and we have nothing but money.” If the phrase is not a contradiction, it might be said that she abased herself haughtily in order to exalt him. If they had company to dinner, Lawrence must glance over the list of dishes; if a new plant arrived, he must advise where it should be set; if a stranger came to town, it was for Lawrence to decide whether the Ferriers should show him hospitality.“I think our rehearsal may as wellbe also a little garden-party,” Annette said to him. “We need scarcely any practice, nothing to speak of, everything went so well the last time.”She was tying on her bonnet before a mirror in the drawing room, and Lawrence stood by a window, hat in hand, looking out at the carriage waiting at the gate. He did not seem to have heard her.“I should only ask a few persons who will be sure to go to the concert and help along,” she continued, twirling lightly about to see if the voluminous folds of her black silk train fell properly. She wanted Lawrence to notice her, for she was looking uncommonly well. Black was becoming to her; and the delicate lavender gloves, and bunch of scarlet geranium-flowers half lost in lace just behind her left ear, gave precisely the touch of color that was needed. But he stood immovable, watching the horses, perhaps, or watching nothing.Seeing him so abstracted, she looked at him a moment, remembering an old story she had read of Apollo apprenticed to a swine-herd. Here was one, she thought, who might have graced Olympus, yet who had been bound down to poverty, and labor, and disappointment. His pale and melancholy face showed that he might be mourning even now his ignominious captivity. Thank God, she could help him! He should not always be so sorrowful.He moved slightly, without looking toward her, aware of her silence, though he had not noticed her speech. She checked, with an effort, the impulse to go to him with some affectionate inquiry, and went on with what she had been saying. “We need the editors, of course, and I can ask Dr. Porson to bring Mr. Sales. They say he is very clever, and will bringThe Auroraup again. They will give us puffs, you know. If I send the doctor a note this afternoon, he will tell Mr. Sales this evening, and he can write a nice little report of the rehearsal before he comes to it, and have it out to-morrow morning.”“Are you ready?” asked Lawrence, turning round from the window.“All but this.” She gave him a little gold glove-buttoner; and held out her hand.“By the way,” she said suddenly, “have you heard the story about Mr. Schöninger?”Lawrence let slip the tiny button he had just caught, and stared at her in silence. Perhaps he remembered something that Jane, the priest’s housekeeper, had charged him not to tell.“Such a romantic story!” she said, smiling at having won his attention. “I forgot to tell you. They say that he has a lawsuit going on in England about an immense property to which he is the rightful heir. It is from some very distant relative who left Germany for England a hundred years ago. He has no personal acquaintance with any of the family there now; but ten years ago, he learned that the heirs had died out leaving him nearest to the estate. He was then in Germany, and had a little property, on which he lived like a gentleman. He spent every dollar he had in the effort to obtain his rights, but did not succeed. Neither did he fail; but more money was needed. And that’s the reason why he came to this country and became a music-teacher, and why he lives so plainly, and works all the time. Lily Carthusen told me she heard that he sent money to England every quarter, and that all his earnings go into that lawsuit.”“Lily Carthusen knows a greatdeal about other people’s business,” the young man remarked ungraciously. “She is one of the kind who peep into letters and listen at doors. I wouldn’t repeat any of her stories, Annette.”“I only tell you, Lawrence,” she replied humbly.“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Schöninger is a fine fellow; and people imagine there is some mystery about him, simply because he won’t tell everybody his business, and who his grandfather and grandmother were. There are thousands of persons in this city who, if you should keep one room in your house locked, would believe that it was full of stolen goods.”They were going out through the door now, and Annette assumed a bright smile. No one must see her looking mortified or sad, least of all when she was with Lawrence. She stepped lightly into the carriage, and gave her order with the air of one anticipating a charming drive. “To the convent, Jack, straight through the town, and slowly.”Which meant that they intended to have some conversation, and were not unwilling to be observed.“I always like to see the sisters when I am out of tune,” Miss Ferrier said. “They are so soothing and cheerful. Besides, they are brave. They fear nothing. They are not always quaking, as people in the world are. They have the courage of children who know that they will be taken care of. I always feel stronger after being with them. Not that I am usually timid, though. I think I have more courage than you, Lawrence.”She smiled playfully, giving her true words the air of a jest.He looked straight ahead, and ignored the jest. “You have a clear conscience, that is the reason,” he replied. “It’s the old serpent in the tree that makes it shaky.”“It is very true,” she said calmly, after a moment’s consideration. “I do not believe I ever did anything wicked.”“As a rule, I don’t like religious people,” the young man observed; “but I’ve no objection to any of the nuns. The fact that they will wear unbecoming dresses and cut off their hair proves them sincere. It’s the strongest proof a good-looking woman could give. You needn’t laugh, Annette. Just think a minute, and you’ll find it is so. Now, look at that little Anita I saw up there once. She’s as pink and white as the inside of a sea-shell, and her hair must be a yard long, and beautiful hair at that. Yet she is going to have those braids cut off, and hide her face under a black bonnet. That means something. I only hope she may not be sorry when it is too late. I’d like to talk with her. Ask to see her to-day, won’t you?”Annette’s answer was very gravely uttered. “Certainly, if you wish,” she said. “But you will not have much opportunity for conversation with her.”He roused himself, just beginning to take some interest in their talk. “You can manage it, Annette. Get her singing for me, then take Sister Cecilia off out of the room.”He spoke coaxingly, and with a faint smile; but she did not lift her eyes. “You know there must be no trifling with such a person, Lawrence. Why need you wish to speak to Anita? Is it impossible for you to see an interesting girl without trying to captivate her? You need not be proud of such success.”He threw himself back on the cushions again. “Oh! if you are jealous, there is no more to be said about it.”As she remained silent, he presently stole a questioning glance into her face, and, seeing the cloud on it, smiled again. It always amused him to see any evidence of his power over women, and no proof could be stronger than the sight of their pain.“Don’t be silly now, Ninon!” he said softly. “You know I don’t mean to trifle nor flirt, but only to satisfy my curiosity. I never spoke to a young vestal like that, and I would like to know what sort of language they use. Be good, dear!”That coaxing voice could still make her smile, though it could no longer cheat her into delight. She looked at him indulgently, as one looks at a spoilt child whom one has no desire to reprove, yet sighs over. “I will do what I can, Lawrence; but you must be careful not to behave so that the sisters will wish to exclude you in future.”“That’s a good girl!”Then his momentary gaiety dropped off like a mask.“Yes, I like to see that kind of religion,” he resumed. “But I hate a gilt-edged piety. I despise those people who are so nice that they call the devil ‘the D., you know,’ and whose religion is all promenade-dress and genuflections. I suspect them. I was talking the other day with a lady who said something about the ‘D., you know,’ and I answered, ‘No, I don’t know. What do you mean?’ She had to say it; and I haven’t a doubt she always says it when she is angry. Bah!”They had reached the gate, and, seeing no one, alighted and left the carriage there. But Sister Cecilia met them at the entrance, her welcoming smile like a benediction.As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau. The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap. Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full, sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up, was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it was to her unbeautiful, but because itsfragments of beauty served only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and, therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast. Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them. Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself. After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.After the first piece, Miss Ferrier and Sister Cecilia, seated by a distant window, began to talk in whispers about various business affairs; but as the gentleman by the piano was listening, and pushed toward her a second sheet of music when she laid the first aside, the performer did not rise.“Yes,” Sister Cecilia was saying, her eyes fixed on a rough sofa the nuns had themselves stuffed cushions for, “I think there is something up-stairs that will do to cover it. We have several large packages that have not been opened. They were sent here the day after Mother Chevreuse died, and we have had no heart to touch them since. There are some shawls, and blankets, and quilts that Mrs. Macon gathered for us from any one who would give. I am sure we shall find something there that will do very well.”“And now sing for me,” Lawrence said gently, as Anita ended her second piece. “I am sure you sing. You....” He checked himself there, not daring to finish his speech.“You have the full throat of a singing-bird,” he was going to say.He placed on the music-rack a simple littleAve Maria, and she sang it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.“It is a sweet song,” he said; “but you can sing what is far more difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me a love-song.”He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and tried to recollect something.Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:“O Deus! ego amo te.”It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her Beloved.When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone with Lawrence Gerald.Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered. “She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedience.“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,” Anita replied simply.Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening it out, she threw it over their improvisedsofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it, Lawrence?”She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out into the porch, and was beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside the grounds.They took leave after a minute.“Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert,” was Annette’s farewell charge to the sister. “We are to have our last rehearsal to-night.”She glanced into her companion’s face as they drove along, but refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita. His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from it.TO BE CONTINUED.

GRAPES AND THORNS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”CHAPTER IV.AN INCH OF FRINGE.Mr. Schöningerhad been in such haste to keep his engagement the evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to conceal her disappointment.He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even kind when he answered her.“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing to-night.”She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come nearer, but hesitated to do so.At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their walks.These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, andso pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs. Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil, and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin. His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he could not renew.“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try. All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair start. You know I never had a chance.”His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right. Don’t be unhappy about thepast, nor blame yourself in anything. All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital, and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard this afternoon.”“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it, and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their time.”She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly, glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs. Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her example.Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out, and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze, and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a little ball on the water-column of a fountain.Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too, yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden, and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon. The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed with stars.Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion outside and the waving boughs andvines had a quieting effect; yet she was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt. Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence. To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without thanks.An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life, when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life then, and would gladly hide in death.Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree, then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger, coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden for it.Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts. She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears. Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up her cross, this time with an upward glance.When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God, could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”Yet that the happiness of givinglove and help is nobler and more elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline, till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift. Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars. Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a whisper. It was a thunder-storm playedpiano. Annette was lulled to a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream, growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like a shriek that syllabled her name.She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the voice of lamentation leaves the othershors de combat.In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on a chair near by.“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I do?” she cried.Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat were too dry for speech.“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence, thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer powerless.“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man. “Tell me all you know about it.”Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down immediately.Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis and Jack will take care of you.”Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if her daughter had not held her.“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the breathless messenger.“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your horses?”He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then hurried on up the hill.The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went into the house.Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness; and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald, weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An argument was, however, found to silence her.“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have you told any one?”“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for the sake of punishingthat man.“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a peculiar light-brown shade.Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenchedin her stiffening fingers when they took her up.The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over the wheel into the carriage.“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand, nor what I saw,” she whispered.He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided thereafter.“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all, and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties, and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It didnot seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service. She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used, and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some littlesouvenirsto those who would value them for her sake. And now let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone out of the house.”“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is he quiet? Does he eat anything?”“He eats about as much as would keep a fly,” the housekeeper sighed. “But he sits at the table, and tries the best he can. If you’d seen him the first night after it was all over! I came up and poured the tea out for him, and, indeed, my eyes were so full I came near scalding myself with it. He took something on his plate, and made believe taste of it, and talked in a cheerful sort of way about the weather and about something he wanted to have done. But when he saw my hand holding the cup out to him, he stopped short in what he was saying, and choked up, and then he leaned back in his chair and burst out a-crying. It was the same little cup and spoon she always gave him, but it wasn’t the same woman that held it across the table for him to take. And I set the cup down and cried too: what else? And, ‘Jane,’ says he, ‘where’s the little hand that for years has been stretched out to me every evening?’ What could the like of me say, ma’am, to comfort a priest in his sorrow? I couldn’t help speaking, though, and says I, ‘May be there isn’t the length of the table between you,’ says I, ‘and the little hand is holding out the first bitter cup it ever offered you to drink. But, oh! drink it, father dear,’ says I, ‘and may be you’ll find a blessing at the bottom.’ And then I was so ashamed of myself for preaching to the priest that I ran out of the room. After a little while his bell rang, and I wiped my eyes, and went in. And there he sat with a trembling kind of a smile on his face, and says he, ‘Jane, how am I to get my tea at all?’ So I gave him the cup, and went and stood by the fireplace. And he talked about things in the house, and asked me if I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. The Lord knows I didn’t, ma’am, through my mother not being overneat, besides taking a drop now and then. But it’s decenter, and so I said yes. And when I was cheered up a little, he sent me out. But when I was going through the door, he spoke to me, and says he, ‘Jane!’ And when I looked back, and said ‘Sir!’ says he, ‘Jane, you’re right. There is a blessing at the bottom of it.’ And he smiled in a way that was sadder than tears. Since that he has the tray set at his elbow, and pours the tea for himself. And now, ma’am,I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t let anybody know, for may be I oughtn’t to speak of it. That first night following the funeral I heard him walking about his room after I went to bed, and I knew he couldn’t sleep; though, indeed, it was little that any of us slept that night. Well, by-and-by, when I’d been drowsy like, I heard him go out into the entry, and I thought that perhaps some one had rung the bell. I was frightened for fear of who it might be; so I got up, and threw something on, and crept up the stairs, and peeped through the rail, all ready to scream for help. I watched him open the door, with the street-lamp shining not far off; and, O Mrs. Gerald! if he didn’t kneel down there and kiss the threshold where she stood that night watching him drive away; and he cried that pitiful that it was all I could do not to cry out loud myself, and let him know I was there.”The first sharpness of the impression made by this event wore away, and people began to talk of other things. Some wealthy Protestants of Crichton made up for F. Chevreuse the money he had lost, and thus soothed their regret for the loss which they could not repair to him. Even those who were most grieved felt their lives closing over the wound. Duties and plans that had been interrupted were resumed, among them that for a concert in aid of the new convent. Miss Ferrier’s rehearsal had been a last preparation for this concert, which had been postponed on account of the death of Mother Chevreuse, and it was necessary to have another.Annette threw herself into these preparations with spirit. Her affairs were prospering as well as she could expect. F. Chevreuse had talked with Mrs. Ferrier, and brought her to reason, and Lawrence had been induced to yield a little. It was settled that the marriage should take place on the first of September, and the young couple spend one year with the mother. After that they were to be free to go where they liked, Annette with an ample allowance assured her, and a promise that the property should be equally divided in case of her mother’s death.“The young man is behaving very well,” F. Chevreuse said, “and he ought to be trusted and encouraged. He goes regularly to Mass, and attends closely to his business. I shall not soon forget how much he did for me when—when I was away that night. The shock seems to have awakened him. He sees what indolence and unfixed principles may lead to, and that a man who rocks like a boat on the tide of his own passions may drift anywhere. We must be good to him.”“If you would only give him a plain talking to, father,” Mrs. Ferrier said. She had an immense faith in the power of talk. “If you would tell him what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. Just warn him.”The priest shook his head.“I believe in sometimes leaving God to warn in his own way,” he said. “It is a mistake for even the wisest man to be perpetually thrusting his clumsy fingers into the delicate workings of the human soul. We are priests, but we are not Gods; and men and women are not fools. They should be left to themselves sometimes. God has occasional messages for his children which do not need our intervention. Too much direction is degrading to an intelligent soul.”F. Chevreuse had been involuntarily expressing the thought that startedup in his own mind rather than addressing his companion; and, seeing at a glance that she had not understood a word of what he had been saying, he smilingly adapted his talk to her comprehension.“I heard a story once,” he said, “of a careful mother who was going away from home to spend the day. Before starting, she called her children about her, and, after telling them of certain things which they were not to do, she concluded in this wise: ‘And don’t you go up into the back attic, to the dark corner behind the big chimney, and take up a loose board in the floor, and pull out a bag of dry beans there is there, and get beans in your noses.’ Then she went away, having forbidden every evil which she could imagine might happen to them. When she came home at night, every child had a bean up its nose. Don’t you see she had better not have said anything about those beans? The children didn’t know where they were. No; if you want to keep any one from evil, talk to him of what is good. The more you look at evil, even to abuse it, the less shocking it is to you. The more you talk about it, the more people will do it. Sometimes it must be spoken of; but beware of saying too much. Do you know when darkness appears darkest? When you have been looking at light. Therefore, my lady, say all that is pleasant to this young man, and try to forget that there ever was anything unpleasant.”Mrs. Ferrier was not one to oppose the earnestly expressed wish of a clergyman, and, at this time, all F. Chevreuse’s people felt an unusual desire to show him their love and obedience. Besides, she was rather proud of having been considered so implacable that no one but a priest could influence her, and of being able to say, in defence of her change of plan: “I did it for the sake of F. Chevreuse.” She even boasted a little of this intercession, and took care it should be known that the church had begged her to be lenient, and had for a moment anxiously awaited her decision.“Besides,” she would add, “he takes a good deal more pains to be pleasant now.”Lawrence, indeed, took no such pains, and, perhaps, liked Annette’s mother less than ever. The only change was in herself. She had, by being civil to him, rendered it possible for him to be agreeable. When he was spoken of slightingly, she had insulted him; when he was praised to her, she conciliated. It was not necessary that there should be any change in him.Annette, too, had taken his cause up with a high hand. The passion of love, which had sometimes made her timid in speaking of him, was unconsciously giving place to a passion of pity, which made her fearless. Woe to the servant who was dilatory in waiting on Mr. Gerald, or lacking in any sign of respect for him. He was consulted about everything. Not a curtain, nor chair, nor spoon could be bought till he had approved. A cool “I will see what Lawrence thinks of it,” was enough to postpone a decision on any subject. “He has taste, and we have nothing but money.” If the phrase is not a contradiction, it might be said that she abased herself haughtily in order to exalt him. If they had company to dinner, Lawrence must glance over the list of dishes; if a new plant arrived, he must advise where it should be set; if a stranger came to town, it was for Lawrence to decide whether the Ferriers should show him hospitality.“I think our rehearsal may as wellbe also a little garden-party,” Annette said to him. “We need scarcely any practice, nothing to speak of, everything went so well the last time.”She was tying on her bonnet before a mirror in the drawing room, and Lawrence stood by a window, hat in hand, looking out at the carriage waiting at the gate. He did not seem to have heard her.“I should only ask a few persons who will be sure to go to the concert and help along,” she continued, twirling lightly about to see if the voluminous folds of her black silk train fell properly. She wanted Lawrence to notice her, for she was looking uncommonly well. Black was becoming to her; and the delicate lavender gloves, and bunch of scarlet geranium-flowers half lost in lace just behind her left ear, gave precisely the touch of color that was needed. But he stood immovable, watching the horses, perhaps, or watching nothing.Seeing him so abstracted, she looked at him a moment, remembering an old story she had read of Apollo apprenticed to a swine-herd. Here was one, she thought, who might have graced Olympus, yet who had been bound down to poverty, and labor, and disappointment. His pale and melancholy face showed that he might be mourning even now his ignominious captivity. Thank God, she could help him! He should not always be so sorrowful.He moved slightly, without looking toward her, aware of her silence, though he had not noticed her speech. She checked, with an effort, the impulse to go to him with some affectionate inquiry, and went on with what she had been saying. “We need the editors, of course, and I can ask Dr. Porson to bring Mr. Sales. They say he is very clever, and will bringThe Auroraup again. They will give us puffs, you know. If I send the doctor a note this afternoon, he will tell Mr. Sales this evening, and he can write a nice little report of the rehearsal before he comes to it, and have it out to-morrow morning.”“Are you ready?” asked Lawrence, turning round from the window.“All but this.” She gave him a little gold glove-buttoner; and held out her hand.“By the way,” she said suddenly, “have you heard the story about Mr. Schöninger?”Lawrence let slip the tiny button he had just caught, and stared at her in silence. Perhaps he remembered something that Jane, the priest’s housekeeper, had charged him not to tell.“Such a romantic story!” she said, smiling at having won his attention. “I forgot to tell you. They say that he has a lawsuit going on in England about an immense property to which he is the rightful heir. It is from some very distant relative who left Germany for England a hundred years ago. He has no personal acquaintance with any of the family there now; but ten years ago, he learned that the heirs had died out leaving him nearest to the estate. He was then in Germany, and had a little property, on which he lived like a gentleman. He spent every dollar he had in the effort to obtain his rights, but did not succeed. Neither did he fail; but more money was needed. And that’s the reason why he came to this country and became a music-teacher, and why he lives so plainly, and works all the time. Lily Carthusen told me she heard that he sent money to England every quarter, and that all his earnings go into that lawsuit.”“Lily Carthusen knows a greatdeal about other people’s business,” the young man remarked ungraciously. “She is one of the kind who peep into letters and listen at doors. I wouldn’t repeat any of her stories, Annette.”“I only tell you, Lawrence,” she replied humbly.“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Schöninger is a fine fellow; and people imagine there is some mystery about him, simply because he won’t tell everybody his business, and who his grandfather and grandmother were. There are thousands of persons in this city who, if you should keep one room in your house locked, would believe that it was full of stolen goods.”They were going out through the door now, and Annette assumed a bright smile. No one must see her looking mortified or sad, least of all when she was with Lawrence. She stepped lightly into the carriage, and gave her order with the air of one anticipating a charming drive. “To the convent, Jack, straight through the town, and slowly.”Which meant that they intended to have some conversation, and were not unwilling to be observed.“I always like to see the sisters when I am out of tune,” Miss Ferrier said. “They are so soothing and cheerful. Besides, they are brave. They fear nothing. They are not always quaking, as people in the world are. They have the courage of children who know that they will be taken care of. I always feel stronger after being with them. Not that I am usually timid, though. I think I have more courage than you, Lawrence.”She smiled playfully, giving her true words the air of a jest.He looked straight ahead, and ignored the jest. “You have a clear conscience, that is the reason,” he replied. “It’s the old serpent in the tree that makes it shaky.”“It is very true,” she said calmly, after a moment’s consideration. “I do not believe I ever did anything wicked.”“As a rule, I don’t like religious people,” the young man observed; “but I’ve no objection to any of the nuns. The fact that they will wear unbecoming dresses and cut off their hair proves them sincere. It’s the strongest proof a good-looking woman could give. You needn’t laugh, Annette. Just think a minute, and you’ll find it is so. Now, look at that little Anita I saw up there once. She’s as pink and white as the inside of a sea-shell, and her hair must be a yard long, and beautiful hair at that. Yet she is going to have those braids cut off, and hide her face under a black bonnet. That means something. I only hope she may not be sorry when it is too late. I’d like to talk with her. Ask to see her to-day, won’t you?”Annette’s answer was very gravely uttered. “Certainly, if you wish,” she said. “But you will not have much opportunity for conversation with her.”He roused himself, just beginning to take some interest in their talk. “You can manage it, Annette. Get her singing for me, then take Sister Cecilia off out of the room.”He spoke coaxingly, and with a faint smile; but she did not lift her eyes. “You know there must be no trifling with such a person, Lawrence. Why need you wish to speak to Anita? Is it impossible for you to see an interesting girl without trying to captivate her? You need not be proud of such success.”He threw himself back on the cushions again. “Oh! if you are jealous, there is no more to be said about it.”As she remained silent, he presently stole a questioning glance into her face, and, seeing the cloud on it, smiled again. It always amused him to see any evidence of his power over women, and no proof could be stronger than the sight of their pain.“Don’t be silly now, Ninon!” he said softly. “You know I don’t mean to trifle nor flirt, but only to satisfy my curiosity. I never spoke to a young vestal like that, and I would like to know what sort of language they use. Be good, dear!”That coaxing voice could still make her smile, though it could no longer cheat her into delight. She looked at him indulgently, as one looks at a spoilt child whom one has no desire to reprove, yet sighs over. “I will do what I can, Lawrence; but you must be careful not to behave so that the sisters will wish to exclude you in future.”“That’s a good girl!”Then his momentary gaiety dropped off like a mask.“Yes, I like to see that kind of religion,” he resumed. “But I hate a gilt-edged piety. I despise those people who are so nice that they call the devil ‘the D., you know,’ and whose religion is all promenade-dress and genuflections. I suspect them. I was talking the other day with a lady who said something about the ‘D., you know,’ and I answered, ‘No, I don’t know. What do you mean?’ She had to say it; and I haven’t a doubt she always says it when she is angry. Bah!”They had reached the gate, and, seeing no one, alighted and left the carriage there. But Sister Cecilia met them at the entrance, her welcoming smile like a benediction.As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau. The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap. Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full, sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up, was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it was to her unbeautiful, but because itsfragments of beauty served only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and, therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast. Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them. Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself. After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.After the first piece, Miss Ferrier and Sister Cecilia, seated by a distant window, began to talk in whispers about various business affairs; but as the gentleman by the piano was listening, and pushed toward her a second sheet of music when she laid the first aside, the performer did not rise.“Yes,” Sister Cecilia was saying, her eyes fixed on a rough sofa the nuns had themselves stuffed cushions for, “I think there is something up-stairs that will do to cover it. We have several large packages that have not been opened. They were sent here the day after Mother Chevreuse died, and we have had no heart to touch them since. There are some shawls, and blankets, and quilts that Mrs. Macon gathered for us from any one who would give. I am sure we shall find something there that will do very well.”“And now sing for me,” Lawrence said gently, as Anita ended her second piece. “I am sure you sing. You....” He checked himself there, not daring to finish his speech.“You have the full throat of a singing-bird,” he was going to say.He placed on the music-rack a simple littleAve Maria, and she sang it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.“It is a sweet song,” he said; “but you can sing what is far more difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me a love-song.”He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and tried to recollect something.Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:“O Deus! ego amo te.”It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her Beloved.When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone with Lawrence Gerald.Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered. “She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedience.“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,” Anita replied simply.Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening it out, she threw it over their improvisedsofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it, Lawrence?”She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out into the porch, and was beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside the grounds.They took leave after a minute.“Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert,” was Annette’s farewell charge to the sister. “We are to have our last rehearsal to-night.”She glanced into her companion’s face as they drove along, but refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita. His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from it.TO BE CONTINUED.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE.”

AN INCH OF FRINGE.

Mr. Schöningerhad been in such haste to keep his engagement the evening before that he had made the rehearsal a short one, and the company did not remain long after he went. Perhaps the family did not seem to them quite so gay and pleasant as usual. Certainly no one objected much to their going. The only remonstrance was that uttered by Annette, when Lawrence Gerald took his hat to follow the last visitor.

“What! are you going, too?” she exclaimed involuntarily. She was learning not to reproach him for anything, but it was impossible to conceal her disappointment.

He showed no impatience. On the contrary, his voice was quiet and even kind when he answered her.

“You cannot think it would be very pleasant for me to stay this evening,” he said. “I want to wipe away some disagreeable impressions before I come again. Besides, I must finish my afternoon’s writing to-night.”

She had to own that he might well shrink from meeting her mother again just then, particularly as the lady did not seem to have recovered her good-humor. In fact, while they were standing together near the conservatory, she crossed the front hall from one room to another, and cast a watchful glance back at them, as if she would have liked to come nearer, but hesitated to do so.

At sight of her, they turned away, and went out through the garden door at the rear of the long hall, and came round the house instead of going through it. This garden was extensive, occupying nearly or quite two acres of land, and was surrounded by a low stone wall overgrown in some places with vines, in others shaded by shrubs or trees. Crichton was so well governed that high walls were not necessary to protect the gardens, especially when people were so well known to be perfectly willing and able to protect their rights as the Ferriers. A few notable examples, made in a very spirited manner at the beginning of their residence, had inspired transgressors with a wholesome awe of them and their premises. Not a flower was broken, not a cherry nor a plum disappeared from their trees, not an intruding footstep printed their walks.

These grounds were now sweet with a profusion of June roses, andso pink that, as Annette walked through them with her lover, they appeared to be flushed with sunset, though sunset had quite faded, leaving only a pure twilight behind. Besides the newly planted trees, which were small, a few large maples had been left from the original forest, and shaded here and there a circle of velvet sward. A superb border of blue flower-de-luce enclosed the whole with its band of fragrant sapphire.

The two walked slowly round the house without speaking, and Lawrence stepped through the gate, then, turning, leaned on it. Once out of Mrs. Ferrier’s presence, he was not in such haste to go. Two linden-trees in bloom screened them from observation as they stood there; and, since pride no longer compelled him to keep up an indifferent or a defiant manner, the young man yielded to his mood. He was sad, and seemed to feel even a sort of despair. In a weak way he had admired all that was admirable, and despised all that was ignoble, yet he had lacked the resolution necessary to secure his own approval. He was still noble enough to feel the loss of that more bitterly than any outside condemnation. When he could, he deceived himself, and excused his own shortcomings; but when some outward attack tore aside the flimsy veil, and showed him how he might be criticised, or when some stirring appeal revived the half-smothered ideal within him, then he needed all the soothing that friendship or flattery could bestow. While listening to Mrs. Ferrier that afternoon, he had not been able to exclude the humiliating conviction that he had himself forged the chains that held him in that ignoble dependence, and that ten years of earnest endeavor would have set him in a position to command the fulfilment of his wishes. But now, he assured himself, it was too late to begin. His earliest foe, his own nature, had allied itself with one scarcely less strong, a pernicious habit, and it was now two to one. He must be helped, must go on with this engagement, and patch up the life which he could not renew.

“If she would give up the point of our living with her, all would be well,” he said presently. “Why couldn’t we board at the Crichton House? I don’t mean to be idle, and don’t wish to be. I wouldn’t make any promises to her, Annette, and I won’t make them to any one who threatens me; but I am willing to tell you that I really mean to try. All I want is to get out of my little way of living, and have a fair start. You know I never had a chance.”

His lip and voice were unsteady, and, as he looked up appealingly into her face, she saw that his eyes were full of tears. A grief and self-pity too great for words possessed him. That element of childlike tenderness and dependence which survives the time of childhood in some men, as well as in most women, made him long for the pity and sympathy of one to whom he had never given either sympathy or pity.

Annette, woman-like, found no fault, or at least expressed none. It was enough if he needed her sympathy. She had thought that he only needed her wealth. Her heart ached with pity for him, and swelled with indignation against all who would censure him. His foes were her foes.

“I know you never had a chance, Lawrence,” she said fervently; “but never mind that now. You shall have one. F. Chevreuse shall talk to mamma, and make her give me at once what I am to have. It is my right. Don’t be unhappy about thepast, nor blame yourself in anything. All lives are not to follow one plan. Why should you have begun as a drudge, and spent all these years in laying up a little money? What better would you be now for having the experience of an errand-boy and a clerk, and for the memory of a thousand mortifications and self-denials? You might have two or three thousand dollars capital, and be, at best, a junior partner in some paltry firm, which I should insist on your leaving. Is that so much to regret?”

He smiled faintly, and, his cause being so well defended, ventured to attack it. “To be mortified is not necessarily to be degraded,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been obliged to listen to the lecture I heard this afternoon.”

“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it, and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their time.”

She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly, glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.

Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs. Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her example.

Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out, and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze, and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a little ball on the water-column of a fountain.

Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too, yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden, and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon. The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed with stars.

Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion outside and the waving boughs andvines had a quieting effect; yet she was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.

Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt. Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence. To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without thanks.

An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life, when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life then, and would gladly hide in death.

Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.

While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree, then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger, coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden for it.

Slight as the incident was, it broke the train of her painful thoughts. She sat up with a gesture that flung the past with all its beautiful hopes and wishes behind her, and welcomed the one thought that came in their stead, sad yet sweet, like a smile half quenched in tears. Lawrence Gerald did not love her, but he needed her, and she took up her cross, this time with an upward glance.

When we have set self aside, from whatever motive, the appeal to God for help is instinctive, and seems less a call than the answer to a call. As though Infinite Love, which for love’s sake sacrificed a God, could not see a trembling human soul binding itself for the altar without claiming kindred with it. “My child, the spark that lights thy pyre is from my heart. Hold by me, and it shall not burn in vain.”

Yet that the happiness of givinglove and help is nobler and more elevating than the pleasure of receiving them Annette did not then realize, perhaps would not have believed. Who does believe it, or, at least, who acts upon the belief till after long and severe discipline, till the world has lost its hold on the heart, and it has placed all its hopes in the future? Fine sentiments drop easily from the lips of those to whom they cost nothing, or who have forgotten the struggles by which their own peace was won. Those who are fed can talk eloquently of patience under starvation, and those who are warmed can cry out on the folly of the poor traveller who sinks to sleep under the snowdrift. Verily, preaching is easy, and there is no one who has such breath to utter heroic sentiments as he who never puts them in practice.

As Annette lay there, growing quieter now that all was settled, clouds came up from behind the hills, and slowly extinguished the stars. Opaline lightnings quivered and expanded inside those heavy mists without piercing them, as though some winged creature of fire were imprisoned there, and fluttering to escape; and every time the air grew luminous, the azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed rose-red out of their shadows. Deep and mellow thunders rolled incessantly, and a thick rain came down in drops so fine that the sound of their falling was but a whisper. It was a thunder-storm playedpiano. Annette was lulled to a light sleep, through which she still heard the storm, as in a dream, growing softer till it ceased. And no sooner did she dream it had ceased than she dreamed it had recommenced, with a clamor of rain and thunder, and a wind that shook the doors and windows, and a flash like a shriek that syllabled her name.

She started up in affright. The sky was clear and calm, and the storm had all passed by; but the wet trees in the garden shone with a red light from the windows, and there was noise and a hurrying to and fro in the house, and her mother was calling her with hysterical cries.

Annette would have answered, but her tongue was paralyzed with that sudden fear. She could only hasten into the house with what speed the deathly sickness of such an awakening allowed her.

Mrs. Ferrier was walking through the rooms, wringing her hands, and calling for her daughter. “Where is Annette? What has become of Annette?” The servants stood about, silent and confounded by the noisy grief of their mistress, unable to do anything but stare at her.

There is usually but one chief mourner on such occasions, however many candidates there may be for the office. The one who first raises the voice of lamentation leaves the othershors de combat.

In one of her turns, Mrs. Ferrier saw Annette leaning pale and mute on a chair near by.

“O Annette, Annette! do you know what has happened? Oh! what shall I do?” she cried.

Annette could only cling to the chair for support. Her mouth and throat were too dry for speech.

“Somebody has killed Mother Chevreuse!” The girl slipped down to her knees, and hid her face a moment. Nothing had happened to Lawrence, thank God! Then she stood up, shocked and grieved indeed, but no longer powerless.

“Will you tell me what it is, John?” she asked, turning to the man. “Tell me all you know about it.”

Her mother’s noise and volubility were too irritating.

John’s story was soon told. Lawrence Gerald, having been awakened by a messenger from the priest’s house, had been up there to call them before going for F. Chevreuse. He wished some of them to come down immediately.

Annette’s mind was clear and prompt in any emergency which did not touch her too nearly. She saw at once all that was necessary to be done.

“Ma, please don’t take all the attention to yourself,” she said rather impatiently. “It isn’t you who are killed. Try to think of what should be done. John, you and Bettie will go down with me. The rest of you lock the house securely, and let no one in whom you don’t know. Louis and Jack will take care of you.”

Bettie flew with alacrity to prepare herself, willing to brave all perils in the company of John; but, coming down again, found that her mistress was also going. There was no help for it. The servant-maid fell humbly into the rear, while Mrs. Ferrier clung to the arm of the footman, and saw an assassin in every shadow. At sight of a man hurrying up the hill toward them, she cried out, and would have fled if her daughter had not held her.

“Nonsense, ma! it’s Lawrence,” Annette said, and went to meet the breathless messenger.

“I’m going after F. Chevreuse,” he explained. “Can I have one of your horses?”

He stopped only for Annette’s reply: “Take anything you want!” then hurried on up the hill.

The little cottage by the church was all alight, and people were hurrying about, and standing in the open door and the entry.

“Now, recollect, ma, you must keep quiet, and not get in anybody’s way,” was the daughter’s last charge as they drew near; then they went into the house.

Honora Pembroke met Annette at the door of the inner room. The two girls clasped hands in silence. They understood each other. The one was strong to endure with calmness, the other strong to do with calmness; and, till F. Chevreuse should come, all rested on them. Mrs. Gerald, weaker of nerve, could only sit and gaze about her, and do what she was told to do. Jane was in the hands of officers, who were trying to find out what she knew, and prevent her saying too much to others. It was not an easy task; for what the woman knew and what she suspected were mingled in inextricable confusion, and the only relief her excitement could find was in pouring out the whole to whoever would listen. An argument was, however, found to silence her.

“You will help the rogue to escape if you tell one word,” the detective said. “If you want him to be punished, you must hold your tongue. Have you told any one?”

“Nobody but Lawrence Gerald,” Jane answered, recovering her self-control. It would be hard to keep silence, but she could do it for the sake of punishingthat man.

“Well, say nothing to any one else. Look now, and remember how it looks, then forget all about it till you are asked in court.”

Jane and the two policemen in the little room with them drew nearer and scrutinized closely the contents of a slip of paper that the detective held in his hand. It was an inch or so of grey worsted fringe torn from a shawl; and, clinging to the fragment, a single human hair, of a peculiar light-brown shade.

Poor Mother Chevreuse! This little clue had been found clenchedin her stiffening fingers when they took her up.

The three looked intently, then drew back, and the detective carefully folded the paper again, and placed it in his pocket-book.

An hour later, F. Chevreuse arrived. We will not enter the house with him. The two guests that there await him, death and an unspeakable grief, demand that homage of us, that we do not intrude.

As Lawrence Gerald was driving away from the door after having brought the priest, Jane called out to him, and, when he stopped, leaned over the wheel into the carriage.

“Don’t let a soul on earth know what I told you we found in her hand, nor what I saw,” she whispered.

He muttered some half-stifled word about not being a tattler.

“Promise me you won’t,” she persisted, laying her hand on his arm.

He gave the promise impatiently—women’s ways are so annoying when one is excited and in haste—shook her hand off, and drove away.

Let us pass over the first days that followed. The gossip, the wonderment, the show of grief that is merely excitement, and, still more, the grief that is real, and shrinks from showing itself—who would not wish to escape sight and sound of them? We may well believe that one so beloved and honored was followed to her last home by the tears and blessings of a crowd, and that one so bereaved was the object of an immense sympathy and affection. We may also be sure that those to whom the law gives in charge the search for such offenders did not neglect their task. We will not fraternize with the detectives nor with the gossips. Let them do their work, each after his kind.

When weeks had passed away, Mrs. Gerald had not yet dared to mention his loss to F. Chevreuse; but he spoke of it to her; and, having once spoken, she felt sure that he wished the subject to be avoided thereafter.

“It seems to me that I never was a real priest till now,” he said. “I was not conscious of making any sacrifice. I had a pleasant home, and one there to whom I was all in all. Now I have no earthly tie, nothing to come between me and my Master’s work. I don’t mean to say that she was an obstacle; on the contrary, she was a great help; but she was also an immense comfort, more a comfort than I deserve, perhaps. I do not deny that it is sad, but I know also that it is well. There are no accidents in God’s providence. The only thought almost too hard for me to bear is that I took her affection so carelessly. She gave her all, and I did not remember to tell her that it was precious to me. She was a tender, loving creature, and, when I was a child, she gave me that fondness that children need. I forgot that she might need fondness as much when she grew old. I forgot that, while I had a thousand duties, and interests, and friends, she had nothing but me.

“It is too late to talk of it now; but if I could have been permitted one minute to go on my knees to her, and bless and thank her for all her love, I could bear this better. For that man, whoever he may be, I have no feeling but pity. Unless the safety of others should require it, I hope he may not be taken. I haven’t a doubt the unfortunate wretch wanted the money, but didn’t mean to hurt any one, except in self-defence. I do not wish to know who he is.”

Mrs. Gerald was too much affected to utter a word in reply. It didnot seem to be F. Chevreuse who was speaking to her in that sad voice, from which the ringing tone had quite gone, and that pale face was not like his. It seemed, too, that in those few weeks his hair had grown white.

He resumed after a moment: “There are some things at the house I would like to have you see to. Whatever is valuable in money, the silver and a few other things, I mean shall go toward a new altar-service. She wished it. But there are some trinkets and things that she used, and clothing and books, that I would like to have you take away. I don’t want to see them about. Let Honora choose whatever she likes for herself. My mother was fond of her. Keep what you wish, and give some littlesouvenirsto those who would value them for her sake. And now let us set our faces forward, and waste no time in vain lamentations.”

“O Mrs. Gerald!” Jane cried, when the lady went there in compliance with the priest’s request, “my heart is broke! All the light is gone out of the house.”

“Don’t speak of that,” Mrs. Gerald said. “Tell me of F. Chevreuse. Is he quiet? Does he eat anything?”

“He eats about as much as would keep a fly,” the housekeeper sighed. “But he sits at the table, and tries the best he can. If you’d seen him the first night after it was all over! I came up and poured the tea out for him, and, indeed, my eyes were so full I came near scalding myself with it. He took something on his plate, and made believe taste of it, and talked in a cheerful sort of way about the weather and about something he wanted to have done. But when he saw my hand holding the cup out to him, he stopped short in what he was saying, and choked up, and then he leaned back in his chair and burst out a-crying. It was the same little cup and spoon she always gave him, but it wasn’t the same woman that held it across the table for him to take. And I set the cup down and cried too: what else? And, ‘Jane,’ says he, ‘where’s the little hand that for years has been stretched out to me every evening?’ What could the like of me say, ma’am, to comfort a priest in his sorrow? I couldn’t help speaking, though, and says I, ‘May be there isn’t the length of the table between you,’ says I, ‘and the little hand is holding out the first bitter cup it ever offered you to drink. But, oh! drink it, father dear,’ says I, ‘and may be you’ll find a blessing at the bottom.’ And then I was so ashamed of myself for preaching to the priest that I ran out of the room. After a little while his bell rang, and I wiped my eyes, and went in. And there he sat with a trembling kind of a smile on his face, and says he, ‘Jane, how am I to get my tea at all?’ So I gave him the cup, and went and stood by the fireplace. And he talked about things in the house, and asked me if I didn’t want my mother to come and live with me. The Lord knows I didn’t, ma’am, through my mother not being overneat, besides taking a drop now and then. But it’s decenter, and so I said yes. And when I was cheered up a little, he sent me out. But when I was going through the door, he spoke to me, and says he, ‘Jane!’ And when I looked back, and said ‘Sir!’ says he, ‘Jane, you’re right. There is a blessing at the bottom of it.’ And he smiled in a way that was sadder than tears. Since that he has the tray set at his elbow, and pours the tea for himself. And now, ma’am,I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t let anybody know, for may be I oughtn’t to speak of it. That first night following the funeral I heard him walking about his room after I went to bed, and I knew he couldn’t sleep; though, indeed, it was little that any of us slept that night. Well, by-and-by, when I’d been drowsy like, I heard him go out into the entry, and I thought that perhaps some one had rung the bell. I was frightened for fear of who it might be; so I got up, and threw something on, and crept up the stairs, and peeped through the rail, all ready to scream for help. I watched him open the door, with the street-lamp shining not far off; and, O Mrs. Gerald! if he didn’t kneel down there and kiss the threshold where she stood that night watching him drive away; and he cried that pitiful that it was all I could do not to cry out loud myself, and let him know I was there.”

The first sharpness of the impression made by this event wore away, and people began to talk of other things. Some wealthy Protestants of Crichton made up for F. Chevreuse the money he had lost, and thus soothed their regret for the loss which they could not repair to him. Even those who were most grieved felt their lives closing over the wound. Duties and plans that had been interrupted were resumed, among them that for a concert in aid of the new convent. Miss Ferrier’s rehearsal had been a last preparation for this concert, which had been postponed on account of the death of Mother Chevreuse, and it was necessary to have another.

Annette threw herself into these preparations with spirit. Her affairs were prospering as well as she could expect. F. Chevreuse had talked with Mrs. Ferrier, and brought her to reason, and Lawrence had been induced to yield a little. It was settled that the marriage should take place on the first of September, and the young couple spend one year with the mother. After that they were to be free to go where they liked, Annette with an ample allowance assured her, and a promise that the property should be equally divided in case of her mother’s death.

“The young man is behaving very well,” F. Chevreuse said, “and he ought to be trusted and encouraged. He goes regularly to Mass, and attends closely to his business. I shall not soon forget how much he did for me when—when I was away that night. The shock seems to have awakened him. He sees what indolence and unfixed principles may lead to, and that a man who rocks like a boat on the tide of his own passions may drift anywhere. We must be good to him.”

“If you would only give him a plain talking to, father,” Mrs. Ferrier said. She had an immense faith in the power of talk. “If you would tell him what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. Just warn him.”

The priest shook his head.

“I believe in sometimes leaving God to warn in his own way,” he said. “It is a mistake for even the wisest man to be perpetually thrusting his clumsy fingers into the delicate workings of the human soul. We are priests, but we are not Gods; and men and women are not fools. They should be left to themselves sometimes. God has occasional messages for his children which do not need our intervention. Too much direction is degrading to an intelligent soul.”

F. Chevreuse had been involuntarily expressing the thought that startedup in his own mind rather than addressing his companion; and, seeing at a glance that she had not understood a word of what he had been saying, he smilingly adapted his talk to her comprehension.

“I heard a story once,” he said, “of a careful mother who was going away from home to spend the day. Before starting, she called her children about her, and, after telling them of certain things which they were not to do, she concluded in this wise: ‘And don’t you go up into the back attic, to the dark corner behind the big chimney, and take up a loose board in the floor, and pull out a bag of dry beans there is there, and get beans in your noses.’ Then she went away, having forbidden every evil which she could imagine might happen to them. When she came home at night, every child had a bean up its nose. Don’t you see she had better not have said anything about those beans? The children didn’t know where they were. No; if you want to keep any one from evil, talk to him of what is good. The more you look at evil, even to abuse it, the less shocking it is to you. The more you talk about it, the more people will do it. Sometimes it must be spoken of; but beware of saying too much. Do you know when darkness appears darkest? When you have been looking at light. Therefore, my lady, say all that is pleasant to this young man, and try to forget that there ever was anything unpleasant.”

Mrs. Ferrier was not one to oppose the earnestly expressed wish of a clergyman, and, at this time, all F. Chevreuse’s people felt an unusual desire to show him their love and obedience. Besides, she was rather proud of having been considered so implacable that no one but a priest could influence her, and of being able to say, in defence of her change of plan: “I did it for the sake of F. Chevreuse.” She even boasted a little of this intercession, and took care it should be known that the church had begged her to be lenient, and had for a moment anxiously awaited her decision.

“Besides,” she would add, “he takes a good deal more pains to be pleasant now.”

Lawrence, indeed, took no such pains, and, perhaps, liked Annette’s mother less than ever. The only change was in herself. She had, by being civil to him, rendered it possible for him to be agreeable. When he was spoken of slightingly, she had insulted him; when he was praised to her, she conciliated. It was not necessary that there should be any change in him.

Annette, too, had taken his cause up with a high hand. The passion of love, which had sometimes made her timid in speaking of him, was unconsciously giving place to a passion of pity, which made her fearless. Woe to the servant who was dilatory in waiting on Mr. Gerald, or lacking in any sign of respect for him. He was consulted about everything. Not a curtain, nor chair, nor spoon could be bought till he had approved. A cool “I will see what Lawrence thinks of it,” was enough to postpone a decision on any subject. “He has taste, and we have nothing but money.” If the phrase is not a contradiction, it might be said that she abased herself haughtily in order to exalt him. If they had company to dinner, Lawrence must glance over the list of dishes; if a new plant arrived, he must advise where it should be set; if a stranger came to town, it was for Lawrence to decide whether the Ferriers should show him hospitality.

“I think our rehearsal may as wellbe also a little garden-party,” Annette said to him. “We need scarcely any practice, nothing to speak of, everything went so well the last time.”

She was tying on her bonnet before a mirror in the drawing room, and Lawrence stood by a window, hat in hand, looking out at the carriage waiting at the gate. He did not seem to have heard her.

“I should only ask a few persons who will be sure to go to the concert and help along,” she continued, twirling lightly about to see if the voluminous folds of her black silk train fell properly. She wanted Lawrence to notice her, for she was looking uncommonly well. Black was becoming to her; and the delicate lavender gloves, and bunch of scarlet geranium-flowers half lost in lace just behind her left ear, gave precisely the touch of color that was needed. But he stood immovable, watching the horses, perhaps, or watching nothing.

Seeing him so abstracted, she looked at him a moment, remembering an old story she had read of Apollo apprenticed to a swine-herd. Here was one, she thought, who might have graced Olympus, yet who had been bound down to poverty, and labor, and disappointment. His pale and melancholy face showed that he might be mourning even now his ignominious captivity. Thank God, she could help him! He should not always be so sorrowful.

He moved slightly, without looking toward her, aware of her silence, though he had not noticed her speech. She checked, with an effort, the impulse to go to him with some affectionate inquiry, and went on with what she had been saying. “We need the editors, of course, and I can ask Dr. Porson to bring Mr. Sales. They say he is very clever, and will bringThe Auroraup again. They will give us puffs, you know. If I send the doctor a note this afternoon, he will tell Mr. Sales this evening, and he can write a nice little report of the rehearsal before he comes to it, and have it out to-morrow morning.”

“Are you ready?” asked Lawrence, turning round from the window.

“All but this.” She gave him a little gold glove-buttoner; and held out her hand.

“By the way,” she said suddenly, “have you heard the story about Mr. Schöninger?”

Lawrence let slip the tiny button he had just caught, and stared at her in silence. Perhaps he remembered something that Jane, the priest’s housekeeper, had charged him not to tell.

“Such a romantic story!” she said, smiling at having won his attention. “I forgot to tell you. They say that he has a lawsuit going on in England about an immense property to which he is the rightful heir. It is from some very distant relative who left Germany for England a hundred years ago. He has no personal acquaintance with any of the family there now; but ten years ago, he learned that the heirs had died out leaving him nearest to the estate. He was then in Germany, and had a little property, on which he lived like a gentleman. He spent every dollar he had in the effort to obtain his rights, but did not succeed. Neither did he fail; but more money was needed. And that’s the reason why he came to this country and became a music-teacher, and why he lives so plainly, and works all the time. Lily Carthusen told me she heard that he sent money to England every quarter, and that all his earnings go into that lawsuit.”

“Lily Carthusen knows a greatdeal about other people’s business,” the young man remarked ungraciously. “She is one of the kind who peep into letters and listen at doors. I wouldn’t repeat any of her stories, Annette.”

“I only tell you, Lawrence,” she replied humbly.

“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” he said. “Schöninger is a fine fellow; and people imagine there is some mystery about him, simply because he won’t tell everybody his business, and who his grandfather and grandmother were. There are thousands of persons in this city who, if you should keep one room in your house locked, would believe that it was full of stolen goods.”

They were going out through the door now, and Annette assumed a bright smile. No one must see her looking mortified or sad, least of all when she was with Lawrence. She stepped lightly into the carriage, and gave her order with the air of one anticipating a charming drive. “To the convent, Jack, straight through the town, and slowly.”

Which meant that they intended to have some conversation, and were not unwilling to be observed.

“I always like to see the sisters when I am out of tune,” Miss Ferrier said. “They are so soothing and cheerful. Besides, they are brave. They fear nothing. They are not always quaking, as people in the world are. They have the courage of children who know that they will be taken care of. I always feel stronger after being with them. Not that I am usually timid, though. I think I have more courage than you, Lawrence.”

She smiled playfully, giving her true words the air of a jest.

He looked straight ahead, and ignored the jest. “You have a clear conscience, that is the reason,” he replied. “It’s the old serpent in the tree that makes it shaky.”

“It is very true,” she said calmly, after a moment’s consideration. “I do not believe I ever did anything wicked.”

“As a rule, I don’t like religious people,” the young man observed; “but I’ve no objection to any of the nuns. The fact that they will wear unbecoming dresses and cut off their hair proves them sincere. It’s the strongest proof a good-looking woman could give. You needn’t laugh, Annette. Just think a minute, and you’ll find it is so. Now, look at that little Anita I saw up there once. She’s as pink and white as the inside of a sea-shell, and her hair must be a yard long, and beautiful hair at that. Yet she is going to have those braids cut off, and hide her face under a black bonnet. That means something. I only hope she may not be sorry when it is too late. I’d like to talk with her. Ask to see her to-day, won’t you?”

Annette’s answer was very gravely uttered. “Certainly, if you wish,” she said. “But you will not have much opportunity for conversation with her.”

He roused himself, just beginning to take some interest in their talk. “You can manage it, Annette. Get her singing for me, then take Sister Cecilia off out of the room.”

He spoke coaxingly, and with a faint smile; but she did not lift her eyes. “You know there must be no trifling with such a person, Lawrence. Why need you wish to speak to Anita? Is it impossible for you to see an interesting girl without trying to captivate her? You need not be proud of such success.”

He threw himself back on the cushions again. “Oh! if you are jealous, there is no more to be said about it.”

As she remained silent, he presently stole a questioning glance into her face, and, seeing the cloud on it, smiled again. It always amused him to see any evidence of his power over women, and no proof could be stronger than the sight of their pain.

“Don’t be silly now, Ninon!” he said softly. “You know I don’t mean to trifle nor flirt, but only to satisfy my curiosity. I never spoke to a young vestal like that, and I would like to know what sort of language they use. Be good, dear!”

That coaxing voice could still make her smile, though it could no longer cheat her into delight. She looked at him indulgently, as one looks at a spoilt child whom one has no desire to reprove, yet sighs over. “I will do what I can, Lawrence; but you must be careful not to behave so that the sisters will wish to exclude you in future.”

“That’s a good girl!”

Then his momentary gaiety dropped off like a mask.

“Yes, I like to see that kind of religion,” he resumed. “But I hate a gilt-edged piety. I despise those people who are so nice that they call the devil ‘the D., you know,’ and whose religion is all promenade-dress and genuflections. I suspect them. I was talking the other day with a lady who said something about the ‘D., you know,’ and I answered, ‘No, I don’t know. What do you mean?’ She had to say it; and I haven’t a doubt she always says it when she is angry. Bah!”

They had reached the gate, and, seeing no one, alighted and left the carriage there. But Sister Cecilia met them at the entrance, her welcoming smile like a benediction.

As they entered the parlor, they surprised a little domestic tableau. The door leading to an inner room was partly open, and braced against a chair in which were a pail of steaming water and a bar of soap. Sister Bernadette, the chief music-teacher, held the door-knob in one hand, while with the other she was vigorously scouring the panels. Her sleeves were rolled up to the shoulders, a large apron covered her from chin to slipper, and her veil was removed. As she scoured, her full, sweet face was uplifted, and her large blue eyes watched the success of her labor with perfect earnestness and good-will.

A burst of laughter revealed the spectators to her. Mr. Gerald stood just within the room, bowing profoundly, with gravity and some diffidence, but the two ladies were thoroughly amused.

“Would you not think,” cried Sister Cecilia, “that she expected to see that dingy old door turn between her hands into the great pearl of the New Jerusalem gate? You certainly did expect a miracle, Bernadette.”

Sister Bernadette’s blush was but momentary, only the rapid color of surprise that faded away in dimples as she smiled. Her sleeves were pulled down and her veil snatched on in a trice, and she went to meet their visitors with an air that would have adorned a drawing-room.

“Sister is a witch,” she said. “I was thinking of the gates of the New Jerusalem, though not expecting a miracle.”

This lady, whom we find scrubbing a door, with her sleeves rolled up, was the child of wealth and gentle blood. She had beauty, talents, and culture, and her life had been without a cloud, save those light ones that only enhance the surrounding brightness. Yet she had turned away from the world, not in bitterness and disappointment, nor because it was to her unbeautiful, but because itsfragments of beauty served only to remind her of the infinite loveliness. She had not Sister Cecilia’s enthusiasm; but her heart was a fountain for ever full of love, and cheerfulness, and a gentle courage. She seemed to live in a sunny, spiritual calm above the storms of life.

After a few graceful words, she took leave, promising to send Anita to them. Miss Ferrier wished Mr. Gerald to hear the girl play on the piano, and Miss Ferrier was a benefactor to their community, and, therefore, a person to be obliged. Otherwise they might not have thought it profitable for the child to receive a morning-call from fashionable people who were neither related to nor intimate with her.

Anita came in presently, as a moonbeam comes in when you lift the curtain at night. Softly luminous and without sound, it is there. This girl was rather small and dark-haired, and had a dazzling fairness of complexion to which her simple brown dress was in admirable contrast. Her eyes were blue and almost always downcast, as if she would wish to hide that full, unsteady radiance that shone out through them. Nothing could have been more charming than her manner—timid without awkwardness, and showing that innocent reserve of a child which springs neither from fear nor distrust. She met Miss Ferrier sweetly, but was not the first to extend her hand; and Annette’s kiss, to which she only submitted, left a red spot on her cheek which lingered for some time after. She was one of those sensitive flowers that shrink from the lightest touch. No love was delicate enough for her except that ineffable love of the “Spouse of virgins.”

Lawrence Gerald watched her with enchantment. The immense gravity and respect of her salutation to him had made him smile. It was a new study for him. How sunburnt and hackneyed Annette seemed beside this fair little cloistered snowdrop! Poor Annette, with her grieved and disappointed heart, which surely had not chosen the rough ways of the world, and would gladly have been loved and shielded as this girl had been, received scant charity from the man whose sole hope she was. So are our misfortunes imputed to us as crimes!

Anita played admirably on the piano, turning the music for herself. After her first gentle refusal of his help, Lawrence did not venture to press the matter, fearing to alarm her timidity; but he seated himself near, and, affecting not to observe her, watched every movement.

After the first piece, Miss Ferrier and Sister Cecilia, seated by a distant window, began to talk in whispers about various business affairs; but as the gentleman by the piano was listening, and pushed toward her a second sheet of music when she laid the first aside, the performer did not rise.

“Yes,” Sister Cecilia was saying, her eyes fixed on a rough sofa the nuns had themselves stuffed cushions for, “I think there is something up-stairs that will do to cover it. We have several large packages that have not been opened. They were sent here the day after Mother Chevreuse died, and we have had no heart to touch them since. There are some shawls, and blankets, and quilts that Mrs. Macon gathered for us from any one who would give. I am sure we shall find something there that will do very well.”

“And now sing for me,” Lawrence said gently, as Anita ended her second piece. “I am sure you sing. You....” He checked himself there, not daring to finish his speech.“You have the full throat of a singing-bird,” he was going to say.

He placed on the music-rack a simple littleAve Maria, and she sang it in a pure, flute-toned voice, and with a composed painstaking to do her best that provoked him. He leaned a little, only a little, nearer when she had ended, and sat with her eyes downcast, the lashes making a shadow on her smooth, colorless cheeks.

“It is a sweet song,” he said; “but you can sing what is far more difficult and expressive. Sing once again, something stronger. Give me a love-song.”

He trembled at his own audacity, and his face reddened as he brought out the last words. Would she start up and rush out of the room? Would she blush, or burst into tears? Nothing of the kind. She merely sat with her eyes downcast, and her fingers resting lightly on the keys, and tried to recollect something.

Then a little smile, faint from within, touched the corners of her mouth, her eyes were lifted fully and fixed on air, and she sang that hymn beloved by S. Francis Xaverius:

“O Deus! ego amo te.”

It was no longer the pale and timid novice. Fire shone from her uplifted eyes, a roseate color warmed her transparent face, and the soul of a smile hovered about her lips. It was the bride singing to her Beloved.

When she had finished the last words, the singer turned toward the window, as if looking to Sister Cecilia for sympathy, knowing well that only with her could she find it, and perceived then that she was alone with Lawrence Gerald.

Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.

Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.

When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered. “She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”

The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.

But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedience.

“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.

“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,” Anita replied simply.

Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.

Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening it out, she threw it over their improvisedsofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”

Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it, Lawrence?”

She turned in speaking to him, but he was not there. He had stepped out into the porch, and was beckoning Jack to drive the carriage up inside the grounds.

They took leave after a minute.

“Be sure you all pray for the success of our concert,” was Annette’s farewell charge to the sister. “We are to have our last rehearsal to-night.”

She glanced into her companion’s face as they drove along, but refrained from asking him any questions about his interview with Anita. His expression did not indicate that he had derived much pleasure from it.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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